The Words

Mila crossed the busy street, arriving in front of the store, “Ingrid’s Fine Goods” in gold italics on the glass panelling. The morning sun, playfully seeping through the trees, caressed her face, and she breathed in the fresh start, the newness of it all. Like rainbows after a storm.

“May I help you?” The vendor, a man dressed in pin striped paints with pale, indiscernible eyes, asked as she closed the ancient door behind her, jolting the toy bells awake.

“Just looking,” she quipped with a smile.

Mila loathed the condescension in his voice; as she lifted a windmill lamp off a dresser, she felt more self aware than ever in her farm girl’s sandals and the lint cloud that was her hair.

People are so quick to judge.

As she set the lamp down, she dwelled on the smell of sycamore; the rich wood detailing reminding her of nights spent on the front porch, her dad telling her stories, and informationals on world politics, the cicadas singing into the early evening. He loved to speak like he knew the world, even if it was only through a book. He would say things like words lift the mind and free the spirit. He was a good man.

The beady eyed man stared from his desk. She shook off her nerves and walked over.

“Actually, I came here to sell something,” she said, her voice an octave lower in the air.

The man smiled cruelly, and paid no real attention, looking past her to the well dressed man who had just walked in.

“What would you like to sell?”

She rummaged through her purse, and took out a small, black book.

“A sketchbook?” The man insinuated, scoffing as he rose from his chair, brushing the book aside like a a dirty pigeon in the park.

“It was my father’s, I believe it may be worth something.” Living her dad’s memory through his writings, like the sunshine, was highly irrational, she knew. But Mila was convinced words, simple sketches, when etched with passion, love, and integrity, live on long after we’re gone and that the thoughts of even a simple man could change the world.

The finicky man snapped the book from her hands.

“The purest truth is filling your cup by filling another’s,” he read. “How very sweet.”

“Don’t let time get you all rusted and jaded. Even jade itself sparkles after a few hits,” he continued, flipping a page like it had left a bitter aftertaste.

“I haven’t seen the Pyrenees or the Eiffel in person, but man, I have been there a thousand times, sitting under the shade of a chestnut tree, basking in the sun of the Eiffel gardens, counting the endless rungs of the Tower, every time I opened The Sun Also Rises or La lluvia amarilla," he disarmed her when he asked, “Your father wrote this?” She took this to mean he liked it, bracing herself and suppressing her overexcitement.

“Don’t let the fear of falling keep you from jumping.”

“Remember this, you have the whole world in your mind.”

“Dear, dear, dear this is a fine goods store, meaning we curate what is valuable, and reject what is not. These thoughts are quaint, but I’m afraid —"

“I’m afraid I have to counter offer,” a low voice broke the beady eyed man’s thoughts.

It was the immaculately dressed man, he must have been a good thirty years older, with a silk fedora and a mahogany walking stick.

“Excuse me sir, I was just informing this young woman the guidelines of this store. I believe you don’t understand, she wants to sell this sketch book—"

“Yes, I clearly understand, and my offer is $20,000.”

The small man almost fell over, dropping his mouth open. Mila, who was presently looking down at her own two feet, looked up with surprised, but not shaken, eyes.

“There must be a mistake… you cannot mean you—"

“Yes, I clearly mean $20,000. Do you take it or leave it?”

“I, I take it,” Mila said, firmly.

As the man ripped out a check from his satchel, and filled it out, the other man walked around his desk, whispering low, “You cannot mean to tell me you want to pay that for the thoughts of a no name, unknown, by the look of it, carpetbagger, from God knows where.”

The taller man looked him straight in the eye and said, “What says a Monet is a Monet, or a Chopin is a Chopin, is it not by the feeling they convey, the way they make you reflect on the truth of this world and your place in it? This man, he spoke his truth to his daughter, and now she’s here, bold in the conviction that his legacy lives on. That’s the type of stuff which reminds us why we are alive in the first place.”

The imprudent man almost fell over with rage and embarrassment.

“Good day to you! I would hope,” the older man said to him and closed the door briskly behind him.

As Mila handed him the notebook outside the store, she felt her eyes water.

“This is the last piece of him. He had told me imagination can take you anywhere.”

She smiled weakly and let go, but just as she did, he stopped her.

“Listen, Mila is it? It’s Mila right?” She shook her head yes. “Ok, good. I gave you that check because your father’s legacy does live on - in you. He would want you to have his words, and use them to show something to the world. Which is why I’m contracting you to write his story, your story. I’m a publisher at Y&P Publishing House and I’m giving you the $20,000 under one condition: you must go to Paris and finish his story.” He nudged the black book back in her hands.

As the man walked away, Mila yelled, “I don’t know how to thank you!”

“Don’t thank me, I woke up this morning with the sun on my face. Remember, words lift the mind and free the spirit. They have so much power.”

As he disappeared, Mila smiled through her tears. The sunlight glimmered on that tree-lined street.